Events

My daughter insisted that she had to come home from college to attend the funeral. (I told her, she goes to grad school, it's either within 3 hours driving time, or too far away to drive).  But, okay.

Today we find out that the viewing is on Sunday, and the funeral won't be until Monday.  She wants to stay.  I said no, that'd be three days away from school.

Guess who's really popular today? I figured I didn't need to point out that we wanted to bring her up after school today, and she said no, no, she had to get home right away. Uh-huh.

Wild & Wonderful? No.

If you have the opportunity to drive through the construction on I-81 in West Virginia -- say, at night, with no moon, and during heavy rain -- consider checking into a hotel.

No lights, faded lane markings, abrupt changes in lane location, few lane reflectors -- oh, it's a real frickin' joy.  And the semis barreling through don't help. I found a relatively slow-moving one and just stayed on his tail the whole time. 

Connections

A week ago, the sister of one of my French conversation partners killed herself. Yesterday, I spent about three hours texting with her about the event, and about her sister, and about herself.  She said that talking in English seemed to help her.  I was glad to give whatever assistance I could.

In the meantime, yesterday, my daughter learned that a boy she had known in high school had died.  Today, I am going down to Virginia to bring her home for the funeral. The round trip will be about eleven hours.  I rescheduled my French class, and cancelled my meeting with my mento.

Odd how these things which happen to different people end up affecting my life, and ripple out from there.

The Lotus Touch

Conversation

This morning, I had a conversation with a French friend, about her sister, who had killed herself.  I think that the conversation helped her, just a little bit....  and I was honored to be able to do it.

007

What IS it about that theme that makes it so catchy?

Guy Nails James Bond Theme - Click here for more free videos

O. M. G.

Actual Transformers Robot Car -

Accomplishment

In the Grand Scheme of Things, I know this is small.  But:

Today I listened to a short - about 2 minute - recording in French.  And I understood about 90% of it.

Now, this was a special recording, done by my French instructor.  She was speaking slowly, carefully, clearly. 

Still.  90%.  I'm delighted.  There's hope.

Jewelry

I'm not into jewelry - I don't normally wear anything but my watch, not even my wedding ring.  But Caliber bracelets, which are made from destroyed guns - they intrigue me.

Responding

I hadn't seen the prior videos by these folks, but I think I'm going to look for them.

Phone Stuff

Did some more fooling around with the phone today - went down into the rats nest that is where the two phone lines connect to the outside world (AT&T apparently never saw a wire they didn't like) and ran a short cable from the connection studs to a jack, then plugged in a phone.

Just dangling from the studs, the connection was clear.  No static whatsoever.  So it's got to be the wire.  The one that's up there in the attic, buried under blown-in insulation.

Right now I'm wondering:  phone lines are so 1950s.  Maybe we should just say the heck with this jack, pull it and patch the hole, and find an alternative.  I know Verizon has one that essentially ports our home number to their cellular network.....which of course you'd pay for.  What I want is a router that accepts the incoming landline, and then a wifi connection from that router to the phones.  Hmm....

I Miss Bill

The Movies

I occasionally see photos of people's efforts to create a 'home theater'.  Most of them are nicely done, but I really don't see the point.

This one, on the other hand.....

Heat

Kick plate heaters for a chilly kitchen are awesome.

Musing

Wonder what Romney's Inaugural Message would have been?

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, our daughter returns to college.  We're a little sad, but we are also pleased to see her stepping up to things.  In a lot of ways, we still see - not our little girl, but certainly our teenager, the kid who went through high school, complained about things, performed in color guard, laughed when she received unexpected Christmas gifts.  But we also see a confident, intelligent young woman, one who asks good questions, has good insights. Thinks.  We like that.

Observation

Being in a car with a cat who is demonstrating that the laxative the vet just gave her works really well is not pleasant.  Just glad we had her in a carrier.

Absolutely!

Franch

Apparently, the more words I learn, the worse I pronounce them, and, as an added benefit, I forget words I did know.  Freaking wonderful.

Recidivism

No, not the penal kind.  The French kind.

I am once again feeling stupid and incompetent about this language.  The proximate cause is a mostly-french text conversation i had this morning over skype, where I had to look up almost every sentence.  These were not particularly challenging sentences, either -- but I didn't know them.  The not-so-proximate cause is a task my French teacher gave me, to translate an article from Le Monde.  It's full of colloquialisms and whatnot.  I must have had to look up forty words so far, and thats just halfway through.  Plus none of this really helps me with my immediate goal of understanding the spoken language.  Yes, vocabulary helps, but if you don't realize that a spoken word is actually one that you know, where are you?

So at the moment -- again -- I'm frustrated.